The Siege

by Adrian Levy

  Inside room 632, Ram was lying with his nose pressed into the carpet, thinking back to what an old woman had once told him at the Ramkrishna Mission in Chennai – that acceptance was the best part of renunciation. At the time he had not been able to understand. But now, terrified and in agony, he appreciated her message. ‘Whatever God has for you, accept it rather than fighting it. To accept it is to accept God.’

  He heard a commotion out in the corridor and the splintering of a door. Someone cheered and shouted a report about how they had smashed their way into 639, down the corridor. Soon Ram saw two figures dressed in Taj uniforms shuffling into the room. Both were told to lie face down on the bed. ‘Names,’ a gunman shouted. ‘Adil Irani,’ one of the prisoners said. It was the Aquarius waiter, who had fled the carnage on the ground floor and had been hiding in room 639 for three hours.

  ‘Are you a Muslim?’ a gunman asked Adil. When he nodded, the gunman let rip. ‘You are not a Muslim, you are a blot on jihad. You are a Muslim traitor.’ Adil, who was actually a Parsi, closed his eyes and began to pray, as they laid into him with their guns. They paused. ‘What do you do?’ Adil told the truth: ‘I’m only a waiter.’ They beat him on the legs and back. ‘Come on, now get ready to sacrifice your life for Allah.’ He conjured up his son and daughter’s faces, and those of his wife and mother.

  The gunmen moved on to the other prisoners. ‘And you?’ They slapped the second man. ‘Swapnil Shejwal,’ a voice stuttered. ‘I’m a butler, sir.’

  At the ATS headquarters, the phone rang again and Inspector Kadam listened to a new voice on the line, introducing himself as Abdul Rehman ‘Bada’. Inspector Kadam knew that this was the red T-shirt, who had entered the Taj via its Tower lobby using the crowd as cover. ‘We have brought two [hostages] along, by the grace of Allah.’

  Wasi did not pause: ‘Find out where they are from.’

  Abdul Rehman shouted at the hostages: ‘Where are you from?’ Then he addressed Wasi in the control room. ‘Don’t know what the bugger is saying. He says Parel. What is Parel?’

  It was a district of Mumbai.

  Abdul Rehman said to Wasi: ‘This bastard stays in Bombay. Both of them.’ He turned to shout at someone else: ‘You are also from here?’ He came back on the phone: ‘The old man is not talking.’ He was referring to the banker Ram, naked on the floor.

  In the ATS office they could hear the sounds of scuffling. One of the gunmen was kicking and punching the hostages. It sounded like a rug being aired. Abdul Rehman tried to stop it: ‘Umer, listen to me. Listen to me for a minute.’ Umer, the terrorist in black with the basin haircut, the gunman who had shot up Leopold’s, was thumping Ram and the others. Nothing would make him stop. They groaned and sobbed.

  Abdul Rehman screamed at Umer: ‘Bloody khooti [female donkey] idiot, listen to me. Come here. Listen. Hey, man, listen to me. You don’t listen to me.’ Umer had worked himself up into a rage, kicking and punching the prisoners. Wasi in the control room tried to intervene: ‘Umer?’ Umer briefly came on the line: ‘Hello, hello, hello?’ He was out of breath. Wasi: ‘Salaam Alaikum.’

  But the red mist had not cleared. Umer passed the phone back to Abdul Rehman: ‘He says the prisoners are from Maharashtra.’ Abdul Rehman started shouting at Umer again, while Wasi tried to focus the team. They were at each other’s throats and he needed to get some of them out of the room before they killed the hostages or each other. He had an idea. ‘Light the fire immediately.’ Umer should do it.

  Umer would not obey orders. ‘Come here,’ Abdul Rehman shouted at Umer. ‘Our guys don’t listen,’ he complained to Wasi, who had had enough. ‘Make Umer talk to me,’ he snarled. Wasi ordered them to give Umer another mobile, so that Wasi could call him directly. They took Adil’s phone, Abdul Rehman screaming at Umer: ‘Hold this mobile.’

  Abdul Rehman tried to programme Irani’s phone with Wasi’s number but he was all fingers and thumbs: ‘What is your number? You tell me.’ When Wasi dictated a number, Inspector Kadam took it down, too. He was nonplussed. The number had an Austrian dialling code. He texted his boss. What did that mean? Had they stumbled across a European-backed terror cell?

  Umer at last came on the line and Wasi lost his cool. He passed the phone to someone else in the control room. He needed a break. A new voice tried to talk Umer down.

  Inspector Kadam created a cipher for the voice: Handler 2.

  Handler 2: ‘Hello, Umer?’

  Umer: ‘Yes, this is Umer speaking.’ He sounded surly and not ready to submit. He was like a dog that had savaged a sheep, tasting warm blood for the first time.

  The handler read out a phone number. ‘OK, whose number is this?’ Umer asked, spinning out. Handler 2 replied patiently: ‘This is me. Call me, man. The phone is in my hand.’ The handler spoke as if he were talking a jumper off a high ledge.

  Umer lost it again and began shouting. He sounded like a man scrabbling up a sand dune and repeatedly sliding back down. Wasi in control grabbed the phone, addressing Abdul Rehman in the red shirt: ‘Man, we want to talk to Umer. Tell him there is nothing to worry about.’ Wasi decided on another tactic. He said they had good news to share. The other team had killed the ATS chief. What had the Taj team achieved?

  There was silence. Umer now took the phone. ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘I am here. He sounded shaky but his curiosity had been pricked. ‘Who was killed?’

  Wasi said: ‘The ATS chief for the whole of Bombay has been killed.’

  Umer whooped: ‘By the grace of Allah.’

  Wasi pressed on: ‘A lot of people are injured. They have been killed. Here and there, there is firing. There are people dying everywhere. Everything is on fire. At this time, your target is most important. The maximum media coverage is on the Taj hotel. Brother Qahafa wants to greet you.’ It was Qahafa the Bull, the Lashkar trainer, whose nephew, Fahadullah, was in the assault too, presently holed up in the Trident–Oberoi. Inspector Kadam wrote down Qahafa/Handler 2.

  Qahafa showed all of his experience in the field, speaking calmly and quietly. ‘Brother,’ he said. ‘Allah should accept your service. The wounds of a lot of people have been healed. The prayer you were taught, don’t forget it. Wherever you are sitting, pray thrice. Three times, with full faith, not just half-hearted.’

  ‘OK.’ Umer had been stilled by the lion tamer. ‘You are facing the sea?’ Qahafa asked. He was playing with Google Earth in the control room in Malir Town, and matching it to the TV images had spotted something. ‘There is a building on the road at the junction. There are two places there where the police are standing. Go and fire on them. And give the other brothers my greetings. Stay strong. You have touched the world. Heaven, by the grace of Allah, is much better than this.’

  Inside room 632, the banker Ram heard voices in the corridor: ‘Who have you got?’ And then the answer: ‘I am from a village, please leave me be.’ It was another hostage, Sunil Jadhav, a Taj employee who worked as a bellboy, and who was thrown to the floor, shouting: ‘I am not a rich man, sir.’ Ram then heard a fourth man pleading. He identified himself as Raju Bagle, from housekeeping. The kidnappers tore strips of sheets and bound both men’s hands and ankles.

  ‘My room is now full,’ Ram said to himself, as the new prisoners coughed and cried.

  At 1.47 a.m. the phone rang again. Inspector Kadam jotted down the time. Qahafa the Bull introduced himself, and Abdul Rehman, the gunman in red, greeted him. The latter seemed back on top of things. He had good news: ‘The mujahideen have brought back two lambs. By the grace of Allah.’

  Inspector Kadam texted his boss: ‘Five hostages’. When would the police move on them?

  Qahafa had an idea: ‘Make one of [the hostages] call and speak to their home.’ Then he cheered. ‘The dome is on fire!’ At last there was footage of the flames.

  Another phone rang in the hotel room. Abdul Rehman reported it to Qahafa: ‘One of these bastards has got a call. I’ll answer the phone?’ He found the handset. It was Annie Irani, the waiter’s wife,
who had been trying Adil’s number repeatedly and was now speaking to her husband’s abductor. ‘Adil is with us,’ Abdul Rehman snapped. ‘No, he is not OK. He is as wrong as can be.’ Qahafa on the other line instructed Abdul Rehman: ‘Tell the wife, if you want to save him, then tell the police to stop the operation.’ Abdul Rehman told her, adding: ‘Otherwise we will kill everyone.’

  Someone new walked into the room. ‘Speak to Ali,’ Abdul Rehman told his handler, passing the phone over.

  Inspector Kadam noted down the name. Ali was a name given up by Ajmal Kasab. He was the gunman dressed in yellow. Ali had been out searching for hostages with Umer.

  Qahafa greeted him and Ali replied: ‘By the grace of Allah we have broken the doors with our legs to light the fire. And we found five chickens. We don’t roam around this freely at home.’ Even the gunmen were amazed by the lack of a counter-attack. ‘We are roaming on the third, fourth, fifth floor, waiting for them. Nobody is coming up. Tell those bastards to come up. Someone talk to us, this is no fun.’

  Inspector Kadam texted his boss. What were the police waiting for?

  Ali had one complaint. He had been struck in the leg by a ricocheting bullet when he gunned down the sniffer dog and its handler near the Palace lobby, and his wound was now bleeding badly. Qahafa passed the phone back to Wasi: ‘How is your leg, my brave?’ Wasi purred. He rewarded Ali with gentle words. Ali complained: ‘It’s bleeding and painful.’ Wasi had an idea: ‘You have to heat some ash and rub it in.’

  Then Qahafa returned to business. Who was the naked old man? All the team had gleaned from him was that he was from Bangalore. Qahafar called out: ‘Ask the old man who he is.’

  Umer could be heard shouting at Ram: ‘Name, home, religion and caste.’ Umer grabbed the phone: ‘He says he’s got high blood pressure.’ Umer screamed at Ram: ‘What do you do?’ Inside the room, face down, Ram was thinking fast. A Hindu banker was a prize asset, so what should he say? The only thing he could think of was that he also taught business students. Umer shouted out: ‘He says he teaches.’

  Qahafa knew that a teacher could not afford to stay in the Taj and told Umer, who confronted Ram: ‘A teacher’s salary is twenty thousand rupees (£250), here you pay lakhs [hundreds of thousands]. Are you some kind of smuggler? I’ll deal with you.’ Umer was seeing red again. Ram felt a gun smash down on to his shoulder, his head and his arm. ‘I am going to die,’ he told himself.

  Qahafa could hear a voice screaming: ‘Stop, he’ll die.’ Then Umer’s voice: ‘Ready now? Where do you teach? Which university? How many traitors have you taught? Killing Muslims. Burning neighbourhoods. I’ll deal with you.’ Qahafa could hear the screaming again. This time he did not stop Umer, who snarled: ‘Father’s name?’

  Umer came back on the line, calm once more: ‘K. R. Ramamoorthy.’

  Qahafa paused. Inspector Kadam could hear something click-clacking. Qahafa said: ‘One minute, one minute. Dr K. Ramamoorthy? K. R.? Designer. Professor?’

  Click-clack.

  Qahafa was Googling the name and running it through an image search.

  ‘OK, listen, is he wearing glasses?’ He was. ‘He is balding at the front?’ Umer shouted at Ram: ‘Hold your head straight.’ Umer replied: ‘Yes, yes, he is bald. He’s got a face like a dog.’ Qahafa had found Ram’s online résumé. A top-class hostage. He was pleased.

  Now he warned the team that they would have to consider moving, as the fire was roaring. ‘Go down soon,’ Qahafa said. ‘Take [the banker] down. Kill him yourself.’ What about the other four? ‘Let’s put them together and fire at them,’ Umer suggested. He turned to Adil and laughed. ‘A waiter! The only thing you are waiting for is your death.’

  Inspector Kadam heard a strange sound like a lollipop being sucked. He realized it was Qahafa laughing.

  Ram tried to retreat into his memories, conjuring the seventh-century Mylapore Temple of Kapaleeshwara in Chennai, where he had once prayed daily to the devi (goddess) of the Wish-Yielding Tree and he retraced the way to the central shrine, step by step. But disconcerting noises kept pulling him back to room 632: the fridge door opening, and someone munching a chocolate bar; the plink of a can being pulled and the glug as it was drained; and the heavy, slow breathing of four gunmen, lying side by side on the bed to rest.

  6.

  A Tunnel of Fire

  Thursday, 27 November 2008, 1.50 a.m. – Malabar Hill

  Savitri Choudhury was at home in Malabar Hill, watching the Taj on television, recalling the hours of disorientation after seeing footage of the Twin Towers fall in 2001. Now her city was ablaze, its most famous landmark was being gutted and her best friend was stranded inside. She had to get working. Broadcasters around the world expected her to be their guide, picking her way through the rumours that were pulling the city apart. But she could not think straight.

  The lower floors of the hotel were still brightly lit with silhouetted guests staring out, while the top floor was dark, apart from small pockets of flames here and there. Columns of smoke poured from the roof. Savitri studied the pictures, trying to locate Sabina’s room. She counted up to the sixth floor on the sea-facing elevation, thinking of how she had lain on Sabina’s bed that afternoon. ‘Where is she?’ Savitri said to her husband, sitting beside her.

  She recalled a lunch with three girlfriends in the early 1990s, at Zen, a Chinese restaurant in Delhi’s central Connaught Place, the Empire-era roundabout of restaurants, bookshops and ice cream parlours. Sabina had arrived in sombre black. All the diners had given absent partners the third degree as they tucked into Paneer Ten Pal Style. Sabina had come in for some ribbing about her on-off relationship with Shantanu Saikia, then a much rated (and fancied) rising star at the Economic Times. He had been married once before, which in puritanical Delhi made him dangerous; there was also a rumour about his ex-wife having committed suicide.

  Over glazed honey apples, Sabina had revealed that Shantanu was messing her about. ‘Dump him,’ had been the advice. ‘He’s having his cake and eating it.’ Later that night a friend had called to say Sabina was married. ‘What the fuck? We finished lunch at 4 p.m. and she was not married then.’ Savriti reached a fellow lunch-mate, who filled in the missing five hours.

  Savitri had dropped Sabina off at the Khaadi store and Shantanu had been waiting. To woo her back, he had offered to marry her. Fortified by lunch, she hit back at him: ‘Sure. But let’s do it right now.’ They had zipped off in his car, but had been ejected from the law courts, which required more planning. They were eventually directed to a less principled priest willing to bless the union without any hoo-hah. And afterwards, as she prepared to ring her parents, rehearsing her ‘I have some news’ speech, Sabina had cast her eyes down, realizing that she was still dressed in black.

  Savitri smiled at the memory, her eyes still transfixed by the TV. How was it that reporters churned around the hotel but no rescue party could be raised? Annoyed and anxious, she called her desk and made a deal with the editors. She would report for ABC Radio, but not the TV. Her face would give it all away.

  At the police Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) headquarters in Nagpada, the Shogi telephone intercept system was working well, scooping up, in real time, the conversations between the fidayeen and their handlers. There were three mobiles in use. One was with the four gunmen in the Taj, the second with the two in the Trident–Oberoi, where dozens had been killed in and around a ground floor restaurant called Tiffin, and the last was with the two gunmen in Chabad House, where an American rabbi, his wife, their two-year-old son and several others were being held hostage. The ATS technical section dispatched regular highlights to the acting ATS chief, and to the intelligence agencies, state bureaucrats and the police command, including Rakesh Maria in the Control Room, near Crawford Market.

  The terrorists’ identities and the location of their control room remained a mystery. Everyone was struggling to comprehend the hard data too. The gunmen in Mumbai appeared to be dialling Austria, and receiving calls
from a number in the US: +1 201 253 1824. A cursory assessment by the US intelligence community suggested that what the ATS had uncovered was not an American or European terror cell but something they had never encountered before: an Internet telephone network, with the gunmen in India dialling a remote hub that re-routed the calls to their handlers, and vice versa. The handlers’ control room could be anywhere in the world, even under the noses of the ATS units in Colaba. The Crime Branch’s hard-working number two, Deven Bharti, would have to remain in the back of a vehicle, his laptop on his knee, waiting for the next call.

  The mobile inside the Taj soon rang again, Deven Bharti’s men chasing it down with direction finders and knocking on hotel rooms in Colaba, while Inspector Kadam, with the ATS, listened in.

  ‘Salaam Alaikum.’ ATS now knew the voice. It was Wasi, the handler, calling the four gunmen holed up in room 632 of the Taj Palace along with five hostages, and he wanted an update. Wasi could see from the TV pictures that flames were leaping from the roof and his men needed to move down.

  ‘Walaikum assalam, we’ve found a room, on the [fifth].’ It was the gunman Ali talking, the one dressed in yellow. He had been out scouting for a room where they could shelter from the inferno.

  Wasi asked if they had shifted the hostages already. Not yet, replied Ali. Umer was down there getting it ready.

  Wasi urged them to get moving: ‘Set the rooms above ablaze and come down.’ As always, Ali was compliant: ‘God willing.’ They needed to keep up the momentum and safeguard the prisoners. Wasi told him: ‘My friend, do you know what work you have to do? Bring the hostages down with full security. The policemen must be coming up. The policemen shouldn’t come close.’ They had to keep alert, as surely the authorities would mount a raid soon.

  The ATS texted a warning to the police Control Room. Patil and Rajvardhan had to be contacted. The Taj gunmen were heading down and discussing how to take on the police: ‘Gunmen spoiling for a fight.’